Counting Descent by Clint Smith

I found this book because at work it was in a stack of books I needed to shelve. There was a quote on the cover by Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow) which caught my eye. I opened it to a random page and the poem was called Playground Elegy and it gutted me. I immediately bought the book. 

Today I was looking for something to read next but the new Pierce Brown book comes out tomorrow and I want to start it right away so I didn't want to start a long book, I work later 5-midnight and so I won't have much time to get a longer book done and didn't want to pause a read or wait on the Red Rising #5, Dark Age. It was the perfect day to get into this thin but POWERFUL volume. 

Page after page, poem after poem, Clint Smith packs an emotional punch into each line. Whether it is about his parents love (When Maze & Frankie Beverly Come on in My House), being passed by taxis (For the Taxi Cabs that Pass Me in Harvard Square), his freckles (Passed Down), or his home city of New Orleans (There is a Lake Here among others), this is an incredible read. 

Without a doubt race is the central theme of his work here, being a black man, and it is so powerful to read. Some that stood out to me where race 

No More Elegies Today

How to Make an Empty Cardboard Box Disappear in 10 Steps

what the fire hydrant said to the black boy

The above mentioned Playground Elegy

what the cicada said to the black boy....
I could go on but then I will be listing every entry so just read it and know you will be moved and if like me you are white you will be faced with your privilege and reminded of the need to make change, to be change...

(Finished July 29, 2019)

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

I have read other books by Kristin Hannah (The Nightingale, Firefly Lane), really liked them, and had been told I needed to read this one, so when this was on the Buy 2 Get 1 Free table at work I grabbed it. And I loved it.

It is part historical fiction, the fall of Leningrad, and part family drama, mothers and daughters and the way it can be quite complicated.

Nina and Meredith are two sisters with a very distant relationship with their mother. They don't even know exactly how old she is. They also have a complicated relationship with each other. Meredith stayed near their parents and went to work in the family apple orchard business. She is married to her childhood sweetheart Jeff and they have two daughters and two dogs. Nina is a photojournalist traveling the world with her camera and her lover Danny. Her life is a constant adventure.

When their father has a heart attack they make him promises about taking care of their mother. In the form of a fairytale she tells them they get to know her and what she went through and why she is the way she is. The sisters also learn a lot about who they are two and it is a heartbreaking and beautiful journey that takes them from Russia to Alaska and much further.


My reads with Hannah are three for three and I will read more by her for sure

(Finished July 28, 2019)

We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1) by Hafsah Faizal

This was my very first Owl Crate book and it was also the July Barnes & Noble YA bookclub book so I let my son read it first. He really liked it and so did I and we are both anxious for book 2.

We Hunt the Flame is a story of adventure, love, friendship, betrayal, and magic set in an Arabia type place. There is a forest that has grown up around this world and separated the caliphates and has caused magic to have vanished from the people. There are stories about the death of magic and the Six Sisters who were the guardians. A hunter who is really a huntress in disguise is the only person feeding her people in a place where women are considered the blame for all things bad so she hides. A prince who is used as an agent of death by his father the ruler. A general with a wicked sense of humor who is more than he seems. An immortal and vain man. A female warrior. They form a group thrown together each with their own agenda and it changes them all.

A silver witch. A lion of darkness. Boats with magic crews. Blood magic. Darkness. Death.

This was a fascinating story and I was drawn in from the first page, because hey, I really needed another series to pine for the next book of....AHHH!!!

(Finished July 25, 2019)

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

This is the Barnes & Noble Bookclub August meeting book and I am leading the discussion at work. But it's by Colson Whitehead so I would have read it anyway.

I read The Underground Railroad and Zone One and really liked both!!

The Nickel Boys is the story of a Florida school for boys, a juvenile detention type facility that started in the Jim Crow days and Jim never left....It is the story of Elwood and Turner who met at Nickel. It is their time there in the days of segregation and the corruption of the school is told through Elwood's experience and observations and in the present because on the grounds of the now closed Nickel a secret burial ground is found and the abuse that took place is finally getting looked into. Where Elwood and Turner end up after Nickel is told as well. What happens to the boys is awful but it isn't overly graphically told. The lack of graphic violence doesn't detract from how powerful a book this is.

The story is based on a real school, the Dozier School and in a line used in the book, Colson said in an article I read that there were people to speak for the white boys but someone needed to speak for the black boys, and that is what he does here. But he finds hope in the darkness and hate of the time and place in the words of MLK Jr that Elwood finds strength in.

This is a slim volume, 210 pages, but it packs the power of an epic. I hope this book sparks a great conversation at bookclub on the August 13, and with who ever you get to talk to about it.

(Finished July 21, 2019)

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Until the moment I was done I didn't realize how much I loved this. I mean, I knew I was enjoying it...but when it was done I realized I loved it and was sad to say goodbye to the Count.

A Gentleman in Moscow is one of those quiet reads, no horror, no supernatural twists, no magic, just people and life and time....Like quiet movies, the kids without car chases and explosions, where you really have to watch the movie to get the story, this is the book form, it is a slow burn that gets under your skin and into your heart.

Count Alexander Rostov spend decades in the hotel in Moscow where he lives after being sentenced to "house arrest" and as the years pass people come and go and life outside continues and Alexander observes and lives a very full life even as his physical space becomes small...Alexander wants to be a man of purpose and I would say he certainly becomes such. There is some intrigue as the world goes to war, the cold war begins, and the story of how Alexander even ended up in the predicament he finds himself in unfolds. And there is romance and love and the creation of a family where one finds themself planted...just a lovely and quiet story...

Towles writes beautifully and I totally enjoyed my time with Alexander and Sasha and the rest of the inhabitants of the Metropol.

(Finished July 17, 2019)

Izzy + Tristan by Shannon Dunlap

This isn't a novel, it's a romance. That's what the prologue tells us...the difference being "a romance is more like a fable...it traffics in ideals, mysteries, and obsessions...novel comes from the Italian for "new little story"...and this is about the oldest thing in the world. Love"


Set in modern day Brooklyn NY Izzy moves to the neighborhood with her parents and twin brother.

Tristian lives there with Aunt. Also on the block is Tristan's cousin Marcus.

Tristian plays chess, like just about Master level chess. Marcus uses this to hustle in the park for money betting on the matches.

It sort of works, no one really gets hurt and Tristian loves the game...until the day Tristan beats Hull and Hull loses his shit...this sets in motion a retelling of the old poem/story Tristan & Isolde.

Tristin and Izzy meet and fall in love....Marcus thinks he likes her too and doesn't know about them so wants Tristan to help him "get with her". Another local, a girl named Brianna, Izzy's only friend at her new school, has a crush on Marcus....Tristan is a bit scared of Marcus so they don't tell him right away, kind of hoping that he will get bored and move on...Oh and Izzy is White and Tristan is Black....


With escalating race issues, this is around the time Eric Garner's killer wasn't charged, as the background for their budding love, Shannon writes a story, a tale as old as time, that is also fresh and new and relevant. It is beautiful and heartbreaking....I loved it.

(Finished July 11, 2019)

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman

The manager at the Barnes and Noble where I work had put this ARC aside for me, it will be out in September, and I was picking through my TBR pile and found it. I forgot I had it because I was so wrapped up in my Pride reading and B&N bookclub reads that it got buried. But I started it late in the day Monday and then was so sad when I had to stop and go into work and then yesterday my kids had so much that they needed me to do I didn't get to spend much time with Lea and Ava and Julian but today it was just me, my dog, and this book and I was not going to stop until I was done. And so I am....



Alice Hoffman has managed to do something I wouldn't have thought possible, she made a beautiful fairytale out of the experience of a cast of characters living through the Nazi attempt at exterminating Jews. The backbone of this story is the love Lea's mother has for her and the lengths she was willing to go to to make sure Lea was safe no matter the cost and so we get Ava.

Along the way we meet Julian, Victor, Marianne, Ettie, and others and we are along on a journey of pain, suffering, fear, death, love, life, beauty, and discovering what it means to have a soul, to be alive. This story was so damn beautiful and so very painful, and yet so full of promise and hope. I don't know how she did it but Alice turned this ugly page in history into something more, something unexpected, something life affirming...


(Finished July 10, 2019)

Bring Me Back by B.A. Paris

This is one of those books that leaves you feeling WTF was that, in the best possible way. It is also one of those books that it is next to impossible to write a review of because SPOILERS. 

So here is a vague post all to tell you that YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!!

It is kind of in the realm of Gone Girl or The Girl On The Train in that you don't know who is reliable and who isn't, who did what and who didn't, but this is BETTER. I thought I had figured it out a couple of times and once I came really close but I never quite figured it out and so the ending was fabulous because it was a surprise. 

It is a quick read both because it's under 300 pages and because you can't put it down because you just need to know what the hell is going on. I was so upset when I had to put it down yesterday and go to work and I was so close to done that I took it with me when I walked my dog so I could finish. 

(Finished July 8, 2019)

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

This was my Owl Crate book for June. If you aren't familiar with Owl Crate you  need to be!! It is a monthly box that comes with a YA book and goodies. The book has a special cover that differs from the covers the book has in bookstores and the goodies are awesome, like the June box, there was a pin, a tote bag with a great quote and art on it, a pin, coffee, a gel pen shaped like a key (read the book to understand the importance of that), and a letter from the author.

Anyway, this book, Sorcery of Thorns is a fantasy/adventure about magical books in magical libraries cared for by a girl, Elizabeth, who grows up in this library. But when greed and evil and misused magic enter her realm she is called to be the hero.

Elizabeth was found on the doorstep of a library as an infant and was raised there. When she is 13 she becomes and apprentice and hopes to be a Warden some day. She has a love of the books and some of the books seem to know her heart and react kindly to her. Some books however seem to house dark material and need to be kept in differing levels of tight control. The worst thing that can happen is a book becoming a Malefict, this is taking on a monstrous form and going on a killing spree....There are demons and sorcerers and books that have eyes.....

While trying to find her way and her place in her world she finds friends and love where she least expected to realizing that sometimes the things we are told by those who are teaching us values isn't always right and fear and time without knowing those considered "other" can color how they are seen and maybe, just maybe we need to learn for ourselves the truth and make up our own minds. And sometimes doing the right thing comes at a cost but is still the right thing to do.


I truly loved this book about books and magic and LIBRARIES!!!

(Finished July 7, 2019)

Mrs. Everything (Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition) by Jennifer Weiner

I read this because t's the July bookclub book at work and while it isn't my month to lead the discussion I told the regular ladies I would come because they want to celebrate my birthday which happens to fall 2 days later. Funny aside, another lady who attends, we have the same birthday right down to the year...

I am so glad I read this book!! I had read Good in Bed and have seen the movie In Her Shoes so I'm not totally unfamiliar with Weiner's writing. But I was not prepared for this, for how much I would love this book, for how much it would infuriate me and bring me joy and make me so very sad....

This is the story of Jo and Bethie, Jewish sisters who grow up in Detroit and follows them from childhood in the 1950's through 2022....Along the way they live through  a difficult mother, religion, love, loss, marriage, divorce, women's lib, drugs, war, sex, same sex relationships, the birth of children, illness, and it is so powerful....


I want to go on and on about this book...about how brave and strong Bethie is even when she doesn't think she is, how Jo who seems brave and strong has moments where she is anything but and it changes her life and the lives of others so much, how all of their flaws come back to them in the form of Jo's daughters, how real love sometimes takes a REALLY long time to be noticed, how far women have come but how far there is still left to go....


Even if you aren't near a B&N or you're not sure you want to go to a booklcub, read this book!!!

(Finished July 3, 2019)